Full Surrender

“Good, because I’m so ready to have you all to myself.”

“Is it too early?” She looked back at the party and the full dance floor.

“God, no. This is the most socializing I’ve done in years.” He picked up his jacket and set it around her shoulders, carefully extracting her hair and laying it over the lightweight wool. “When I get home from a deployment, it’s usually all I can do to string a sentence together.”

He was already leading her back toward the main dock and the rest of the party, so she couldn’t gauge his expression, but it unsettled her to think his work would be that draining.

“Oh.” She hastened her steps to walk at his side, careful to remain on the carpet runner so her heels didn’t fall into the cracks between the planks. “I didn’t think about that when I surprised you in Norfolk the other day.”

He ducked closer to speak into her ear. “The last thing I feel is tired around you.”

Her skin hummed with awareness, his strong arm keeping her tucked to his side. Her breath came faster and she wished they were already back at the gatehouse. Now that she’d recovered her sensual self, she couldn’t indulge it enough.

“I’ll just say my thank-yous to your family and then you can remind me why men who can dance are so good in bed.” Her heart beat faster, anticipation flowing through her veins like high-proof alcohol even though she hadn’t visited the bar once tonight.

“Should you check your phone first?” he asked, nodding toward her purse. “It seems like someone really wants to get in touch with you.”

Belatedly, she realized he referred to the active vibrating coming from her satiny evening bag. Her phone buzzed so often she hardly noticed it.

Some of the heat in her veins cooled at the realization she needed to deal with her mother before Whitney Rosen worked herself into a frenzy of worry.

“It’s my mom,” she explained, embarrassed to admit her mom’s semineurotic need to check up on her. Stephanie had tried to be patient, knowing that the abduction had been terrifying for an already nervous mother. “I’ll catch up in a few minutes after I reassure her I’m still in one piece.”

“Of course.” Danny’s hands vanished from her body, giving her space to handle the situation. “I’ve got a few people to thank for coming. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

Watching him walk away, her chest tightened. Already, she was coming to care about him too much. What would it be like when he sailed off into the sunset on the USS Brady until well into next year?

She tugged her phone out of her purse and stepped around the dance floor back onto the lawn of the Murphy home. Seeking out a quiet corner by the boathouse, she ducked away from the ring of white lights that outlined the party space. It was dark over here, which gave her a little case of the heebie-jeebies, but she kept her eyes trained on the party as she punched in her mother’s number.

“Stephanie!” Her mother answered the phone in a panicked squawk. “Where are you?”

“Hello, Mom.” She kept her voice calm. Reasonable. She always hoped to transfer that tranquility to her mother, but it had yet to work in twenty-some years of trying. “I’m with my friend Danny, remember? I’m fine.”

“I’m so glad you’re not alone,” she blustered. “Our publisher forwarded me some of your fan emails by mistake.”

“Excuse me?” Stephanie’s gut churned.

She backed up so that her spine was against the boathouse, bracing herself. Her mother’s publisher had been the same company to buy Stephanie’s memoir of her captivity and time in Iraq, but Stephanie had had little to do with the firm after her book had been so controversial. Besides, she had no intention of ever writing another.

“It must be a glitch in the system that they forwarded the files to my account instead of yours.” Whitney Rosen paused and Stephanie could picture her pacing the floor of her bedroom overlooking Park Avenue in New York City. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have even read the emails if you’d answered my calls, but I started to worry something had happened to you and I thought I would check the fan mail in case there was anything threatening, and...little did I know how threatening it would be. I had no idea you attracted so many crazy people.”

Oh, God. Stephanie didn’t waste time wishing she’d just returned her mother’s calls because her mom would have opened that file from the publisher either way.

Still, the churning in her gut she felt turned to chilly fear even as she reminded herself that her mother frequently overdramatized things. She knew that her book had been controversial for coming down on the side of peace and understanding between cultures during wartime. She hadn’t been advocating antiwar sentiments. She’d just thought some more dialogue would help the war efforts come to an end sooner. “I have an agency that vets the letters and email I receive, remember?”